The Spokane-Review got the first prize for Innovation, an award inaugurated last week by the International Newspaper Marketing Association.

The Spokane was rewarded for a very user-friendly, comprehensive local business search directory.

Although BizFinderNW is not editorial per se, it does fit within the range of services that a newspaper should offer: helping readers and users to access local databases and relevant information about their community's businesses.

Local businesses can post a listing including their address, store hours, a map and a photo for free.

If interested, they can then get a better position on the list or enhance their description by paying for those services.

Launched in January, traffic to BizFinderNW is still limited: 4,000 unique visitors and 30,000 to 50,000 page views monthly. But the hard start-up costs for building the directory were less than $10,000, and the Spokane has already made double the amount in ad contracts.

Source: Poynter.org